At the camp, Father Cosgrave, an Irish Catholic priest, showed me his bayonet wounds — one went clear through him narrowly missing one lung. He told a horrible tale: Last Monday after lunch, the Japanese rounded up 15 or 16 Brothers of the Christian schools, several others priests plus some 50 Filipino civilians ... and bayoneted them all. They were 70 all told including Benigno Aquino's own son, Billy. The Japanese even attempted to abuse some of the wounded and dying women lying there. Some 60 or so died quickly, and the Japanese planned to let no one escape, but the stout concrete building resisted their attempts to blow it up and set it alight.

For a while, Father Cosgrave lay where he fell, wounded and waiting for death. That night, untangling himself from the heap or corpses, he and other survivors edged little by little to the stairs, and crawled UP — not down. They hid in a room that night, all Tuesday, Wednesday, and part of this Thursday. Their thirst was such that they licked the blood of their own wounds. Not by loss of blood, lack of food or water, Japanese attempts to destroy the building, or even the American shells that took out the Japanese battery there, were they affected in their hours of tribulation and agony. Eventually, the Americans stormed the building and found them — still alive.

"It was just terrible," he said, lying weakly in the cot, running a fever and talking when he shouldn't.

"No doubt it was," I said. "But at least you were priests and brothers with lives dedicated to God and a clear conscience. The Filipinos tortured and killed in Fort Santiago must have really had it tough."

"You know," he said, smiling and shaking his head weakly, "I learned something about how to die from them! Courage and patience and endurance ... they could take it. They died like men."

Incidentally, the 15 to 16 Christian Brothers were mostly Germans. The American brothers, if they're still alive, are interned at Los Baños.

. . . .

Albert Elzingre escaped through a MIRACLE — a much overused word these days. The Japanese lined him and 14 others up for execution by machine gun, but the space in the battered building was not wide enough for the 15 to stand shoulder to shoulder. "It all happened so quickly," he said. All of a sudden he found himself behind the line. Turning around, he spotted a hole at the bottom of the wall and crawled through to safety while the machine-gun spat out its lethal hail.

...ooOoo...